


The Death of a Hero

by Lupo (LupoLight)



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Elijah Kamski & Gavin Reed are Siblings, Gavin Reed Centric, Not Beta Read, it has the good ending but not happy, song fic to torture myself, this does not have a happy ending, this is not a happy fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:48:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21775489
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LupoLight/pseuds/Lupo
Summary: Gavin Reed always wanted to be a cop- looking up to Hank Anderson and Captain Fowler since he was a kid. He wanted to be a hero. In the end, the word 'hero' doesn't mean a thing.This is just a songfic to Alec Benjamin's 'Death of a Hero'. It's not happy and I'm sorry for this oh gosh.
Relationships: Hank Anderson & Connor
Comments: 6
Kudos: 48





	The Death of a Hero

**Author's Note:**

> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fO8k63lwCbs
> 
> Go have a listen to fully die a bit inside, I just really wanted to do a sad drabble with Gavin in it. Heard this song for the first time and went 'ah yes, this is perfect'. For once there's no ships! I left it open ended so you can decide if all this changes Gavin or not.
> 
> The paragraphs that are entirely italicized are song lyrics!
> 
> This is not beta'd and I wrote it in like an hour. Have fun!

When Gavin was a kid, he’d sit and watch the news. The world was always changing, far too fast for him to realize. He’d sit beside his brother, who dreamed to be on the news. He was creative and smart, believed humans could be better than they were, believed they needed to leave something behind to outlive them. Gavin- wasn’t. Gavin watched the news and seen  _ heroes _ . He saw people fighting now to protect the present. Firefighters and EMTs, soldiers and cops. Fowler and Anderson. He wanted to be like them, like the guys who fought crime and saved lives. Gavin did his best through school, never enough for his parents, but his brother supported him, and he his brother.

Then his brother created androids. Gavin moved out. Stumbled a bit, got stronger, and still aimed to become a hero. He finished highschool, and then academy, and then he was in the force. Young and enthusiastic, Gavin was a scrapper with a sharp tongue and sharper wit, making friends with  _ the _ fiery lesbian icon Tina phcking Chen, and the calm and level headed Chris Miller. He watched his friends find love and heart ache, and was the first to toast Chris’s wedding. And he met Hank Anderson.

Hank Anderson was everything he thought he would be when he met him. Authoritative, handsome, friendly. He was married and eventually expecting, and Gavin was so psyched that he got to work with his heroes.

_ “I was in Pittsburgh when I saw Superman in the backroom. _

_He was doing lines or something in the bathroom._ _  
_ _I barely recognized him at all.”_

Through the years, Gavin woke up however. Devoting his life to his work left very little for outside of it, so while his friends fell in and out of love with others, he fell in love and harshly out of it with his job. The ‘hero’ aspect died little by little, Gavin realizing they could only do so much. His want to be a hero turned into a want to just be better, to be noticed, to leave a part of him behind somewhere. To know he made a difference. Every time he saw an android, he was reminded of just how much he sounded like his brother.

_ “I saw him doing things you shouldn't do with all that power. _

_ I wish someone would have thrown him in the shower. _

_ I barely recognized him at all.” _

Then Lieutenant Hank Anderson fell. His Superman exposed as another human, when the loss of his kid turned him into a shell of who he was before. Gavin watched as his perfect image of what to be crumbled, and he wanted to scream himself. Heroes weren’t supposed to die like this, silent and ghosts. Gavin found it was a lot harder to tell himself he was a good guy, a hero, when his own sat at desks, one hidden behind glass and the other reeking of booze.

_ “That night I put my youth in a casket, and buried it inside of me. _

_That night I saw through all the magic, now I'm a witness to the death of a hero._ _  
_ _I burned all the pictures in the attic, and threw away the magazines.”_

There was a bad case, Gavin failing to stop the teenager from taking another’s life, and Gavin broke. He shoved all his old photos he treasured growing up, shoved all the magazines and training, and stored it into a box, hiding it in a closest. He would’ve burned them, but it seemed like this was the memorial he held. He tried drinking the pain away, and for a bit it worked. He’d never end up like Anderson, but when he had a rare day off, he’d hit up a bar. Sometimes he’d be satisfied with drinking, sometimes he’d be taken away, losing himself in bruises and pain that numbed him til the morning.

_ “I tried to look away but you can't look away from a trainwreck. _

_ The things you said to boys, well they were shameless _

_ I barely recognized you at all.” _

Then the plastic detective shown up. No drive to save people, no want to be greater. He existed because he was told to, to serve the lieutenant that couldn’t give less of a shit. While Gavin  _ hated _ him, hated that he did this job better than the skeleton of his hero. He took out years of built up anger on the unfeeling mimicry of a hero, and when it eventually bit him in the ass, he accepted the facts. He couldn’t save his hero, and there was none to save him either.

_ “I tried to help but he said he was just too far from saving. _

_ And nothing I could say was gonna change him, _

_ I barely recognized him at all.” _

The time between that, and his world flipping upside down was short, and it reminded Gavin of the youth he buried. He seen people, not just androids but  _ people _ at last, marching through the streets. Unfeeling machines that broke their code to be something more, and Gavin wondered if this was what his brother meant all those years ago. He wondered if he was proud. And then there was Connor. Connor, covered in red blood, LED brighter than it, leading an army to freedom. And Gavin felt hope bubble in him. He didn’t hide the grin as Markus was granted the freedom he chased, and when Connor came back, he hung out in the back.

_ “The death of a hero, he couldn't be saved. _

_ Now I'm cutting the grass and I'll cover his grave. _

_ I'll cover his grave.” _

But there was no congratulations, there was no celebration. Not for Connor, who could so suddenly feel. Not for the absence that hung heavy in the air. The news came to them all in a wave of pain. Hank Anderson was dead, shot down by the hands of a non-deviated version of the man he came to call son. They got the body and over the days, while people celebrated and rioted, Gavin straightened out his dress blues.

_ “The death of a hero, I'm turning the page. _

_ Now I'm cutting the grass and I'll cover his grave. _

_ I'll cover his grave.” _

The day was long and cold when they buried Anderson. Side by side to his son, Connor knelt on the ground. The crowd cleared away, but Gavin stayed. He didn’t want to disrupt the other’s grieving, but he knew what that grief did to his hero. So he stepped forward, standing beside the other. When the cries, laced with static ended, Gavin remained, and Connor faced him. Memories of their last interaction tried to surface, but Gavin looked away, staring at the casket.

  
“ _ Tonight I saw through all the magic, and now we’re a witness to the death of a hero. _ ”


End file.
